LITTLE ROCK (AP) - Moments after his colleagues voted to keep him in the Senate despite a election they called rife with fraud, Jack Crumbly said he believed the two-year battle over his victory was finally over.

"I'd like to ask for unity now, regardless of how people voted," the Democratic senator from Widener said.

Attaining that unity - in his district or in the Senate chamber - will not be easy.

A low-profile freshman senator who was more known for the legal battles over his victory in a 2006 Democratic runoff than any piece of legislation he backed, Crumbly now faces the task of trying to be seen as relevant in a chamber that rendered a virtually unanimous decision that his election was flawed.

And he'll have to do it as a special prosecutor now probes whether any criminal charges should come from the allegations of stuffed ballot boxes, missing stubs and other irregularities.

"I would hate to serve, under the circumstances," said Sen. Bobby Glover, who argued unsuccessfully that Crumbly should be removed from office because of the election flaws.

The Senate instead voted 19-12 to accept a panel's recommendation that Crumbly keep his seat despite its findings of "flagrant" fraud in Crumbly's victory over former state Rep. Arnell Willis for Senate district 16.

"That would be very bothersome to me in serving and sitting in the Senate with a cloud like that hanging over my head," Glover said.

The bar remained high for Crumbly's ouster - with 24 votes needed in the 35-member Senate to expel a member - but emotions ran high as well as the Senate debated whether he should stay or go.

Sen. Tracy Steele, D-North Little Rock, likened the possibility of overturning Crumbly's win to the controversial 2000 presidential election. Steele said it was likely that fraud occurred, but it would be unfair to punish Crumbly if there was no proof he was involved.

"Somebody needs to pay, but not the person who did nothing wrong," Steele said.

That drew a rebuke from Sen. Dave Bisbee, who noted that soldiers were serving in Iraq at that time, armed forces that he said were defending freedoms such as the right to free and fair elections.

"What are you going tell a dead soldier's parents, that we don't even have free elections in Arkansas?" said Bisbee, R-Rogers.

The Senate didn't tell the parents that there aren't free elections. Instead, they said there certainly aren't smooth elections, at least in St. Francis County. And that's likely to spur lawmakers next session to take another look at the state's election laws.

At the top of that is reviewing voters' decision in 2002 to replace the traceable-ballot system in favor of a secret ballot. Sen. Steve Faris, chairman of the Senate State Agencies and Governmental Affairs Committee, said the Legislature should take another look at that constitutional amendment.

Faris said the problem his committee had in probing the 2006 election was the inability to track ballots back to voters. The state Supreme Court, however, said that voters who cast illegal ballots in contested elections can be forced to testify how they voted at trial.

"Now we have no way of tracking fraud or irregularities," said Faris, D-Malvern.

Faris has already said that the runoff and its investigation would lead to an overhaul of the state's election laws, saying there needs to be more uniformity in how different ballots are handled.

"This definitely points to the need for some cleanup," Faris said.

What's less clear is how much the image of the Senate may need to be cleaned up following the debate over Crumbly's future. While Glover said the credibility of the Senate was damaged by its vote, others said its stature was enhanced even more by how it handled its first election contest in state history.

The test of unity back in Crumbly's district will come in 2010, when he says he'll seek another term in office. Crumbly said he doesn't know if the disputed election will play a role in his next election.

"That's going to be left to the general public," Crumbly said.

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DeMillo covers Arkansas government and politics for The Associated Press.